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d often pull up to the curb and ask if I wanted a ride.4 “I’m going your way,” they would insist when I politely declined. “Really, it’s no bother.”5 “Honestly, I enjoy walking.”6 “Well, if you’re sure,” they would say and depart reluctantly, even guiltily, as if leaving the scene of an accident without giving their name.7 In the United States we have bee so habituated to using the car for everything that it doesn’t occur to us to unfurl our legs and see what those lower limbs can do. We have reached an age where college students expect to drive between classes, where parents will drive three blocks to pick up their children from a friend’s house, where the letter carrier takes his van up and down every driveway on a street.8 We will go through the most extraordinary contortions to save ourselves from walking. Sometimes it’s almost ludicrous. The other day I was waiting to bring home one of my children from a piano lesson when a car stopped outside a post office, and a man about my age popped out and dashed inside. He was in the post office for about three or four minutes, and then came out, got in the car and drove exactly 16 feet (I had nothing better to do, so I paced it off) to the general store6 next door.9 And the thing is, this man looked really fit. I’m sure he jogs extravagant distances and plays squash and does all kinds of heal